Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Sharkflei
Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.
Brendon Jones
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
zpzjones
Fortunately this 1923 Universal film by Tod Browning survives for us to view and evaluate. Made right after Browning's OUTSIDE THE LAW this film has all the feel of "Outside the Law" even to the point of looking like it re-uses some of the "Outsidethe Law" sets. Browning's stars in this film are perhaps his favorite muse, Priscilla Dean who appeared in "Outside the Law" and many other Browning films, Wallace Beery, Raymond Griffith and Matt Moore. Even the same cameraman William Fildew is on hand. If you're familiar with Tod Browning's films you'll recognize that he's treading on territory that he would later use at MGM in such films as THE UNHOLY THREE, THE MYSTIC and THE SHOW. In fact Raymond Griffith has a mustache and is dressed wearing a familiar striped shirt almost identical to John Gilbert's in 1927's "The Show". So one gets the feeling that Browning is never really finished saying what he wants to say where as many of his films, such as "White Tiger", keep returning to the same theme. Sources state that "White Tiger" was made in 1921 but not edited and released until 1923 which is probably why it bears such a striking resemblance to "Outside the Law". As in "Outside the Law" and the later "Unholy Three", the story in "White Tiger" has three to four criminals on the run after a jewel robbery, held up in a claustrophobic environment, each having to deal with the other's foibles. In "Outside the Law" it was an apartment on Nob Hill in San Francisco and in "White Tiger" it's a log cabin in western New York. The sense of mistrust amongst the criminals is just as tense as it is in both the 1925 "The Unholy Three" and it's 1930 sound remake.
wmorrow59
This silent drama marked the ninth and last collaboration between director Tod Browning, best remembered for such macabre classics as The Unknown and Freaks, and actress Priscilla Dean, who is hardly remembered at all. Miss Dean was quite the star in her day, and was even called the Queen of the Universal Lot in the early 1920s, but nowadays the only attention she receives is due largely to ongoing interest in some of her colleagues. Beginning in 1918 she and Browning collaborated on a series of crime melodramas, including Outside the Law (1920), a box office sensation that also featured Lon Chaney in a dual role and boosted his career considerably. Chaney would make some of his best known films with Browning in subsequent years, and although their work is generally assigned to the horror genre most of their movies belong to a niche category Browning essentially invented, and certainly favored throughout his career: "caper" flicks involving small-time criminals connected to the lower rungs of show business: circuses, carnivals, wax museums, etc.White Tiger is one of these sagas, and although Chaney is not present -- unfortunately! -- Priscilla Dean plays opposite two interesting co-stars: Wallace Beery, who all but cornered the market in unsympathetic character roles during the silent era, and Raymond Griffith, who at this time had not yet launched his own series of wry, witty light comedies. The story concerns a trio of crooks who manage to get themselves invited into the homes of wealthy suckers by offering an unusual gimmick: a mechanical chess player that can challenge any human player and win. The automaton is, of course, bogus, operated by Griffith concealed within. Meanwhile, Beery impersonates a count (most unconvincingly) and passes off Dean as his daughter. After a demonstration of the machine, Griffith slips out and steals valuables, which are then hidden inside the robot chess player. If the plot sounds a wee bit far-fetched, it is. Perhaps this would have worked better as a comedy, but the actors play it straight and little that happens is believable, even "Hollywood" believable.Eventually the crooks wind up in a remote cabin with their loot and struggle with a growing sense of paranoia regarding each other's intentions. (Browning would re-use this motif with his trio of crooks in The Unholy Three a couple of years later.) The true nature of the relationship between the three characters is ultimately revealed, and there is a modicum of violence before matters are resolved. The last section of the film suffers from "cabin fever" in the most literal sense of the phrase: we're supposed to be gripped by suspense as tensions rise between the three crooks, but instead things get draggy, and viewers could be forgiven for wishing they'd wrap up the story a little faster.The print of White Tiger I've seen is somewhat abridged, but even granting the filmmakers leeway where missing footage is concerned the movie is not entirely coherent and, in the end, not very satisfying. (To put it another way, even if a pristine camera negative of the original release print were to be miraculously discovered, I doubt it would improve matters much, though I'd be happy to be proved wrong about that.) The biggest problem is a scenario damaged by too many credibility stretches and unmotivated actions. As mentioned earlier, this was the ninth crime drama Browning made with Priscilla Dean, and it would be fair to suggest that the formula was wearing thin by this point. Additionally, according to the biography of Browning by David J. Skaal and Elias Savada, at the time this film was made the writer/director was overwhelmed by personal difficulties and drinking heavily, which may explain the movie's shortcomings: the enterprise bears an unmistakable air of fatigue. Apparently the version Browning turned in to his bosses was a mess, and Universal shelved the film for over a year after its completion. Finally, anonymous studios hands were assigned to salvage the project with a fresh edit and newly written title cards. At this late date it's impossible to tell whether the film's deficiencies were present from the beginning or are the result of nitrate decomposition in surviving prints over the years, but in any case the film received poor reviews, and was not a success upon its release in 1923. Subsequently, the major players went their separate ways. Raymond Griffith became a star of sophisticated comedies of the late silent era; Wallace Beery became a character star of the '30s and '40s; and Tod Browning managed to pull himself together and produce the macabre classics for which he is remembered.As for Priscilla Dean, her career went into a decline not long after White Tiger was released. By 1927 she was appearing in two-reel comedies under Hal Roach's "All-Star" banner, alongside such fellow fading names as Mabel Normand and Theda Bara. One of Dean's comedies, Slipping Wives, featured Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in one of their early appearances together, which serves to underscore the irony that the one-time Queen of the Universal Lot is today remembered primarily for the company she kept.
F Gwynplaine MacIntyre
This film's title (a contrived reference to the criminal instinct) is so arbitrary, I suspect that someone in Universal's front office ordered Tod Browning to make a movie called 'White Tiger' but didn't care about its actual content.SPOILERS COMING. We get several of the usual Tod Browning elements here: a grotesque scam, urban criminals who hide out in the woods, stolen jewels concealed in an unprepossessing object, and the convenient regeneration of a lifelong criminal.The story opens in a London slum, resembling the one in 'The Blackbird', but with a prologue structurally similar to the one in 'West of Zanzibar'. Roy and Sylvia Donovan are the young children of a criminal who has just been shopped to Scotland Yard by his henchman Hawkes (Wallace Beery). As the peelers burst in, Hawkes flees with little Sylvia, leaving boy Roy to his own devices as the children's father is killed.Fade in fifteen years later at 'a famous wax musee (sic) in London' (I wonder which one). The grown-up Roy (played by Raymond Griffith) is now working inside a mechanical chess-playing device, clearly inspired by the (equally fraudulent) automaton which Johann Nepomuk Maelzel exhibited in Europe and America in the 1830s, and which was rumbled in an 1836 essay by Edgar Allan Poe (whom Raymond Griffith resembled facially). Working a scam in the same layout is Sylvia (Priscilla Dean), whom Hawkes has raised as a pickpocket. (In the film's main story following the prologue, Beery is made 15 years older with an impressive makeup job, but his character has not gained any weight.) Annoyingly and contrivedly, the Donovan siblings have each believed the other to be killed in the police raid. Now they meet -- the audience are aware of their relationship -- yet fail to recognise each other, although Roy feels a 'brotherly' affection for this woman.The whole gang -- Griffith, Dean, Beery, the mechanical chess-player, Uncle Tom Cobley and all -- hightail it to a very unconvincing New York City. Roy seems to recognise Hawkes as the man who shopped his father, but bides his time. After they pull their big heist, they scarper for a convenient cabin in the woods like the crooks in 'The Unholy Three'. The three lead characters in this movie -- all played by American actors -- are lower-class Londoners who pass themselves off in New York as Italian nobility. It's fortunate that this is a silent movie, so that we're spared what surely would have been ludicrous attempts at double-decker accents. (And anyway, Raymond Griffith had a throat ailment which would end his acting career in talking pictures.) It's deeply annoying that the characters played by Dean and Griffith spend so much time together, in such close quarters, before realising they're brother and sister.SPOILERS NOW. As this is a Tod Browning film, it's no surprise that a man and woman who are lifelong criminals -- Griffith and Dean, this time round -- experience a total and sincere reformation, and (very contrivedly, but also as usual for Browning) they receive a full pardon from the forces of the law. As in 'The Blackbird', this film strongly implies that a well-bred patrician (in this case, Matt Moore's top-hatted stranger) is innately superior to people of plebeian birth.I watched this Tod Browning film with a strong sense of deja vu, as so many of its elements strongly echo so many other Browning films. One point in this film's favour is that it has a bit more comedy relief than usual for Browning, including a couple of wisecracking inter-titles. I'll rate 'White Tiger' 7 out of 10, but I wouldn't recommend it as anyone's first introduction to Tod Browning's bizarre world.
boblipton
Welcome to the world of Tod Browning, a world of sideshows and thieves, vampires and murderers, where men cut off their arms for love and wear dresses for revenge, the world of Dracula and FREAKS. Browning was a true original. He had a long association with Lon Chaney that ended only with death. In Browning's world, people pretend to be other than they are, but they rarely know who they are until it is too late.There are considerable problems with the story as told, probably due to the fact that the movie was shelved for a couple of years and then had the titles rewritten anonymously. I strongly suspect that the relationships between the three leads was a lot more sexual in Browning's script than they are here.In short, this is a bizarre movie and the main actors in it -- Wallace Beery, Raymond Griffith and Priscilla Dean play bizarre characters manipulated by a bizarre fate. Perhaps you don't believe in fate. If not, you may find this movie a mess of wild coincidences. But if you accept Browning's vision, you will find yourself drawn along.There is a happy ending tacked on, for those of you who like happy endings. The rest of us will ignore it.
